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Why HP Fell

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Re: Why HP Fell

#151

Post by Annatar »

johnvanommen wrote: post #110
acdha wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that a single executive had a large share in killing both HP and SGI as major players. Richard Belluzzo was the guy who decided that HP should switch from HP UX on PA-RISC to Windows NT on Itanium, and then moved to SGI to preside over the decision to turn SGI into a Windows reseller and gave the SGI 3D graphics team — which at the time had a legendary reputation — to nVidia along with their…

WOW. I did not know this. And now NVidia is far more than a "gaming" company.

Yep. "Infinite Reality" was a precursor to the Nvidia technology today. That's when first shader pipelines came into existence.

Re: Why HP Fell

#152

Post by Annatar »

acdha wrote: post #123
johnvanommen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOW. I did not know this. And now NVidia is far more than a "gaming" company.

Yeah, there's a really interesting alternative history of computing where SGI's management was anywhere near the same caliber as their engineering.

SGI engineers designed and implemented mind-blowing stuff: inst(1M) software management subsystem is still lightyears ahead of any other, even today, and how long has IRIX been out of production?

Unbelievably mind blowing engineers.

Re: Why HP Fell

#153

Post by Annatar »

technofiend wrote: post #30
Annatar wrote: post #22

Perhaps HP’s biggest sin is how they ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC high quality workstations and servers, how they charged premiums for the hardware and the software, how one couldn’t get HP-UX, its compilers or even the mirroring software unless one was an approved HP “strategic partner”... while a busted-ass, barely good enough, cheap, intel-based PC tin bucket was eating their lunch.

>ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC HP had an interesting portfolio from their Digital and Tandem acquisitions also including the Alpha processor and of course Tandem's non-stop OS. I imagine the pairing of those two by porting non-stop to the Alpha or bringing non-stop's features into Ultrix might have at least kept them a niche player. Having said that HP, Digital and Tandem weren't alone in losing marketshare to Li…

I'm imagining hp workstations with razor-thin margins running HP-UX beating the cheapest PC at brick and mortar stores feature-for-feature, value for the dollar, with tons of multimedia and productivity software preinstalled, since hp hardware had phenomenal multimedia capabilities.

That should have happened with all UNIX vendors but it didn't because the managers believed that they could charge premiums. They managed to brainwash even their engineers so they couldn't see the danger. I used to argue not only with Sun salesmen about this, but even the engineers would defend the price premiums.

We all know how that ended. I have the curse of being right about the wrong thing.

Re: Why HP Fell

#154

Post by erikb »

technobabble wrote: post #80
erikb wrote: post #40

I'm working in a company that is exactly in this same position, that HP was in apparently around the 80s. The thing is that these big companies one or two generations after the founders are mostly staffed with people who know nothing else. They did their university internships in this company, they wrote their final thesis in this company, and now they work in this company. Of course that makes them super loyal, but…

Based on your perspective, what can the company do to either prevent hitting the iceberg, or minimizing the iceberg damage as much as possible?

I don't think there is anything that can be done, honestly. There are reasons for the current way of decision making: keeping the people in power who have been in power since the beginning. If the way of work changes, then also the leadership will change. And the current leadership isn't that fond of such ideas.

I'll keep an eye on how well behemots like Microsoft or Saudi Arabia can really change under new leadership and build my hope on what I'm seeing there.

Re: Why HP Fell

#155

Post by Tsiklon »

Annatar wrote: post #22

Perhaps HP’s biggest sin is how they ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC high quality workstations and servers, how they charged premiums for the hardware and the software, how one couldn’t get HP-UX, its compilers or even the mirroring software unless one was an approved HP “strategic partner”... while a busted-ass, barely good enough, cheap, intel-based PC tin bucket was eating their lunch.

I'd love to see an x86 HP-UX build running on a Z workstation. absolutely not going to happen but still.

Re: Why HP Fell

#156

Post by ataturk »

reacweb wrote: post #10

At school (1991-1994), we had HP and Sun workstations. The HP were nicknamed the toasters because they were hot. The Sun were beautiful beasts. After power failure, we regularly had problems with Sun, never with HP. When we were downloading games from the net, it was easy to compile them on Sun, but was always a nighmare on HP (non standard includes, libraries, ...). I think HP is excellent about hardware, but terrib…

HP Unix workstations were awful. The HPUX was awful. I had to port and cross compile a product on them and it was one of those kinds of experiences I hope I never go through again. At the time, I was young and considered it "paying my dues" and now I see just how backwards and shitty my thinking was and how ridiculous the whole UNIX landscape was back then.

The only thing HPUX had going for it was that SNMP monitoring product that everyone used. Otherwise...junk.

Re: Why HP Fell

#157

Post by collyw »

ccccccccccccc wrote: post #54
reacweb wrote: post #10

At school (1991-1994), we had HP and Sun workstations. The HP were nicknamed the toasters because they were hot. The Sun were beautiful beasts. After power failure, we regularly had problems with Sun, never with HP. When we were downloading games from the net, it was easy to compile them on Sun, but was always a nighmare on HP (non standard includes, libraries, ...). I think HP is excellent about hardware, but terrib…

Having worked there long ago, this is 100% the case. They're a hardware company at heart and never made a good effort to modernize.

I always though of them as a hardware company having seen their name on laptops, but they did have their own brand of Unix and I am currently working on a CDN originally written by them.

Re: Why HP Fell

#158

Post by pjmlp »

Annatar wrote: post #149
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCC wasn't an option on our case back then, as we were required to use the system compilers due to our customer base.

I don't understand what that would have to do with anything, as long as you made a PSF SD-UX "gcc-runtime" fileset with libgcc_s.so.1 in it. That's what I did, worked just fine.

Our customers required being able to build our product with the system compilers managed by their IT.

GCC was only accepted by customers with Linux installs.

Asking GCC to be available in any sort was not an option for other customers. In fact was a deciding factor why we got some contracts back then, as we always cope with whatever they had.

Re: Why HP Fell

#159

Post by nineteen999 »

astrodust wrote: post #126
kristianc wrote: post #26

Gassée's problem is that he sees everything through an Apple-tinted lens. There's almost no subject that he can't turn back to his comfort zone of talking about Apple. Here we're promised an alternative account of why the conventional story of HP mismanagement is false, and end up with a lot of handwaving and 'Apple starting' as an inevitable explanation for HP's decline, despite Apple nearly going bankrupt in the in…

If Apple had never gotten out of the embarrassment that was the Performa Era with a multitude of largely similar but wildly different priced computers, Apple would have gone the way of HP and divested itself of different business units until nothing of value was left. Instead Apple focused, got its shit together, and did something important. HP could have done the same, knuckled down and fixed the fundamental problem…

> Instead Apple focused, got its shit together, and did something important.

Don't forget that Apple would never have got there without making a deal with Microsoft for cash in exchange for support for MS Office on Mac for 5 years. Also Microsoft got a bargain, since for $150M they were able to point to a competitor in the face of accusations of being a monopoly.

https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech-0806/

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...

Hard to think now that Apple came so close to complete and utter failure that $150M was enough to get them back on track. By launching new Macs they were able to generate enough cash to eventually get them into the iPod, iPhone etc. which turned their fortunes around completely.

Re: Why HP Fell

#160

Post by Fnoord »

romwell wrote: post #140
clutchdude wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>got bought by a European bastion of stagnation Which then got bought by Nokia, a Nordic bastion of...something.

Bastion of sisu[1], it seems, given the perseverance of the people in the mobile division and their success at resurrecting the brand at HMD Global. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu

HMD Global, sure, don't forget Jolla though [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla

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